The present invention relates generally to a vehicle with drive apparatus and, more particularly, to drive apparatus having a liquid nitrogen driven turbine engine for primary power coupled with a liquid nitrogen driven flywheel for acceleration and power conservation.
With the onset of global climatic warming, there is increased awareness and political pressure to reduce ever increasing pollution (poisonous carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and other gases which get released into the open atmosphere). The main source of air pollution, next to heavy industry, are cars and gasoline driven vehicles. This gaseous pollution is endangering life on the whole planet.
In the early 1990""s there was formed in the United States a partnership for a new generation of vehicles in which many car companies and many more smaller technical firms became involved. One of the most promising achievements as a result of this was the so-called hybrid electric vehicle, which combined an electrical motor and a highly efficient internal combustion engine. Another result of that effort was the electrical car. Both the hybrid electrical vehicle and the electric car, however, have not moved out of the development stage. Both types of vehicles are prohibitively expensive in the marketplace and both are heavy (due to batteries), which tends to make them ultimately less efficient and less desirable. Outside the United States, particularly in Europe and Japan where the price of gasoline is several times the price in the United States, even fewer of this projected new generation of vehicles have reached the marketplace. Thus, even though there is the ever-increasing danger posed by air pollution to the earth, vehicles intended to reduce air pollution are not becoming a solution for the problem.
The perfect goal is to reduce air pollution from vehicles to zero emission and at the same time to help cool down the global warming and even clean up the atmosphere from carbon dioxide and other poisonous gasses. Indeed, all this could be achieved by a vehicle driven by liquid nitrogen gas as in the present invention.
Nitrogen gas makes up 78.084% of atmospheric air volume. Thus, nitrogen is essentially an infinite source. Liquid nitrogen is relatively inexpensive to produce in large quantities. Thus, liquid nitrogen is essentially an infinite renewable source of energy, environmentally friendly, and if emitted to the open air, will not pollute the air and possibly could help in compensating against global warming. There is significant motivation for the world to accept vehicles driven by liquid nitrogen. The problem with gaseous driven turbine vehicles to date has been performance. That is, they have not been capable of acceleration to the same degree as an internal combustion driven vehicle. The present invention addresses this problem.
The present invention provides for a vehicle to be driven not only by a turbine engine, but also by a fly wheel, both powered by a system fueled with liquid nitrogen. Furthermore, an alternator is also driven by the liquid nitrogen to provide power through a battery for controlling the drive apparatus.
More particularly, the vehicle of the present invention has wheels driven by a drive apparatus. The vehicle includes a fuel tank for containing liquid nitrogen. A heater receives the liquid nitrogen from the fuel tank and converts the liquid nitrogen to nitrogen gas. A plenum tank receives the nitrogen gas from the heater. The vehicle also includes a turbine engine and a mechanism for driving the turbine engine with the nitrogen gas from the plenum tank. The vehicle further includes a fly wheel and mechanism for driving the fly wheel with the nitrogen gas from the plenum tank. The vehicle also has a battery and an alternator for converting mechanical energy to electrical energy to charge the battery. There is mechanism for driving the alternator with the nitrogen gas from either the plenum tank or the output gas from the turbine engine or from both. There is also mechanism for controlling the turbine engine driving mechanism, the fly wheel driving mechanism, and the alternator driving mechanism. The controlling mechanism is powered by the battery.
The fly wheel for the vehicle of the present invention ha a shaft for driving the wheels of the vehicle so that the energy stored can be used for acceleration or receiving energy when braking. The fly wheel has a rotor on the shaft and a turbine wheel for receiving the nitrogen gas from the fly wheel driving the mechanism to thereby rotate so as to drive the shaft and the rotor.